Tag Archives: poverty

Call me boring or old-fashioned, but I have always been under the impression that our generation is supposed to use the example of the one which preceded ours, and learn from their mistakes, improve on the visions they had, and also set a benchmark to be followed by the generation that will succeed ours. Are we not supposed to set an example for the next generation to be leaders so they can also equip the one after theirs with knowledge, or, am I just being old fashioned in my ways and a tad boring? No matter where you go in the world, the legacies of the revolutionaries who came before us are still alive – through literature, murals, biopics, songs, graffiti, you name it – there is no denying that the ideals of long ago still have an impact on people many years later. The likes of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Anne Braden, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Dorothy Tilly, Alice Norwood Spearman Wright, Steve Biko and many others, lived long before many of our generation were born, but their legacies have outlived them. These are men and women who were willing to risk their lives all in the name of equality and change and we owe them a lot for the example they left us. Regardless of whatever race, colour or creed we may be, there is no denying that they stood for meaningful ideals which were intended to unify nations, and chose to sacrifice their lives so that the sufferings they went through would not be faced by the next generation. We probably haven’t faced hardships and injustice in the same scale as they did so does that mean we therefore have nothing to fight against so we are entitled to carry on with our lives and allow the torch they passed on to us to be quenched? At this point I would like to point out that I am not talking about a racial issue here – colour has very little to do with the point I am trying to make as there were many white people who were involved in civil rights movements like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and were inspired by Che Guevara etc and chose to fight oppression. So what is wrong with our generation? Read More